Wednesday 5th March - heart on my sleeve

 Well, with it being Lent 'n' all, I'm thinking a lot more about Christian things. I hope this won't be too trying for anyone who isn't so inclined, but I'll try not to get too off-putting in the blog.

To be really honest, I can't think how else I'd keep my sanity with everything that's going on, in the world and around me without faith and prayer...

....

'My thought for today' which has kept me vertical, as it were, came to me while I was knitting. 

'Many a mickle makes a muckle', or translated into English; 'many small pieces add up to a heap...' 

As I knitted round and round and round my sock, I was considering how many, many little stitches it takes to end up with a sock. Especially when sock yarn is so thin and puny on its own. You gave to be prepared for this; that progress each day is so slow; the sock never grows, the ball of yarn never shrinks...

It's always fascinated me how a single strand can become a denser fabric through the repeated action of knitting. 

Not much progress on the sock today; two or three rows of blue and a couple more of orange. I need to encourage myself to stick at it, which is why I put in a stitch marker when I begin.

I'm hoping something similar happens with prayer; my prayers are sadly rather short and rather shallow, but hopefully they get spliced and knitted up together over time to become something useful.

.....

Knitting

I was distracted while knitting. I poked myself sharply in the tummy once too often. My needles are longer than they need to be. Years ago I was knitting a sock in the GP waiting room; a passing doctor stopped for a moment and commented that she'd always been told that knitting socks was a bit like wrangling a recalcitrant hedgehog. She wasn't wrong.

I don't have any shorter 2.5mm dpns, at least not where I can find them, but I do have a teeny weeny circular needle designed for sock knitting.

I found it during my search for dpns (double pointed needles) so moved my knitting onto it, picked up a couple of dropped stitches, knitted a couple of rounds and put it back on my old needles. I couldn't really get on with it. If anyone would like them, post a comment with your address (I won't publish it) and I'll send the needle to you. 

....

Cover Story Stitching 

Hooray! I managed to restart the stitching for February. It's a good job Ang and I decided to combine February and March. I had stalled out; I do this nearly every time; suddenly lose confidence in the design and what I'm doing. Today I did enough to decide that it would be OK, and pushed on through. 

There's now a good chance I'll get them both done by the end of March.

.....

Music

Still on the theme of 'many a mickle makes a muckle', here's Benjamin Britten's 'Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra'.

This is the version I used to show to the children in school as the orchestra are wearing colour-coded shirts. See if you can spot the viola player holding her instrument the other way round. The children always loved the woman playing the cymbals!